🎉 Celebrating 25 Years of GameDev.net! 🎉
Not many can claim 25 years on the Internet! Join us in celebrating this milestone. Learn more about our history, and thank you for being a part of our community!
P2P, file-sharing, etc.
Author
Do all of the peer-to-peer and file-sharing programs work
by logging onto a central server(s) in order to get a list of
users logged on and then the server contacts all those
logged on in order to search for the file or to send an
instant message?
Per definition, a peer-to-peer system hasn''t got a central server. There are two different methods to get a (partial) list of participating peers:
1) you contact a (known) participant and tell him to give you a list of peers
2) you send host query packets to a multicast group
Most systems use method 1), because it just works. The obvious disadvantage is that you need to know at least one participant of the network.
Method 2) is the more elegant one, since you obviously don''t need a known host in the network to participate. You could say that the network is always online. However, multicasting isn''t widely supported, especially across different ISPs.
As usual, mixing is the key to success. Nothing''s going to stop you from using both approaches.
cu,
Prefect
1) you contact a (known) participant and tell him to give you a list of peers
2) you send host query packets to a multicast group
Most systems use method 1), because it just works. The obvious disadvantage is that you need to know at least one participant of the network.
Method 2) is the more elegant one, since you obviously don''t need a known host in the network to participate. You could say that the network is always online. However, multicasting isn''t widely supported, especially across different ISPs.
As usual, mixing is the key to success. Nothing''s going to stop you from using both approaches.
cu,
Prefect
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
